


It's What's Inside That Counts

by cassowarykisses



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: (but not by a lot), Dialogue Heavy, Dreambubbles, F/M, Fluff, Gift Fic, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, Romance, and a lot of their friends, mentions of the Batterwitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 11:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3132740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassowarykisses/pseuds/cassowarykisses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Roxy finally manage to meet up in the dreambubbles. Roxy brings gushers, and John brings a crush.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's What's Inside That Counts

**Author's Note:**

> Finally decided to post this publicly. I sent this to my wonderful df [toaster1](http://toaster1.tumblr.com/) as a Christmas gift. <3

Okay, so you think this is finally the right timeline.

Or at least, you’ve deemed it time for a break. You can always go back and write this break out of existence after all! Except you’ll remember it? Or maybe you won’t? Ugh. You never thought you’d say it, but paradox time travel was way easier to understand.

The dreambubbles are mostly unaffected by any time travel, though, so they’re where you’re hanging out right now. Hopefully your paradox powers are magnetic, at least to people who know they exist and should be looking for you.

“Sup,” someone says behind you.

You whirl around, and your face lights up. “Roxy!” you yell, and whoosh right over to where she’s floating in the void. It looks like the right Roxy, at least. She’s definitely got the cool bandit-superhero mask thing going on, and her eyes aren’t all white and dead. That had been a bummer seeing on the first few Roxies you met.

God, you really hope this is the right Roxy. Terezi’s list is great, and it’s nice to see friends you haven’t seen in forever (or at all), but there’s something to be said for someone who was expecting you.

“Man, you took right about forevs,” Roxy says, and hugs you. After a moment she pulls back, and turns abruptly serious. “So this zappy thing – it’s workin out?”

“Oh! That!” you blurt out. Wow, you weren’t really prepared to give an after-action report or whatever you call it. Walkthrough? That’s what Rose would probably call it. “Yeah, I forgot I was probably gonna have to give you an update. Hold on – I saw Alternia, and all our friends when they were younger, and I think I helped solve some problems. But I might’ve created new ones . . . “ You sigh.

Roxy clicks her tongue. “Fuck time travel,” she says. “It’s like untangling a nest of earbuds – sometimes you do the right thing and other times you fuck shit up.”

“Well, to be fair,” you say, “That’s a pretty general statement! Sometimes I’ve fucked up making breakfast, but it’s not a daily occurrence or anything. Time travel’s just not my forte.”

“I thought chalk girl was helping you,” Roxy says, blinking. “Isn’t guiding people like what she gets her rocks off to, besides crime scenes?”

You save that one to tell Terezi when you finally get to have a normal conversation again. “Probably! But she just told me where to go, not what to do.”

Time travel is gross and weird, and some of the things you’ve seen have been grosser and weirder. You are pretty done with gross and weird!

Some of this must show on your face, because Roxy frowns. “Girl, we need to get you a vacation.”

“You were the one who just asked me about business!” you protest. But a big part of your brain just wants to collapse down into little putty bits and flow away, like all that oil in your land. You never were much good at keeping complicated things straight, and now you don’t have Rose or anyone to fall back on. Except Terezi, you guess, but the one who gave you the list is dead, and too many of the others don’t even know who you are.

Roxy watches you as you think it over. “I was hella ready to get back on track,” she says. “I just spent like two weeks hanging out in dumpass teenager dream fragments. There’s at least three weird fish guys in there, and it’s like whoa! I’ve had enough fish for the rest of my life, even w/o the Batterwitch.” She pronounces it like “wih ow” and you look at her, puzzled. “With out,” she clarifies, and laughs. “Got a lil too into the texting shit there.”

“So,” you say. “Uh.” You tap your fingers together like they are trapped in an invisible Chinese finger trap, and rack your brain for what you were going to say. Vacation? Yeah, that was it. This riveting intellectual statement arouses the effect you want it to – Roxy grins, and beckons you with her hand.

“Cmon,” she says. “Any of these bubbles’ll do, you can change ‘em around however you want once you’re in ‘em.”

You follow her into the nearest bubble, and it feels just like soap bubbles popping against your skin.

Inside, the landscape is all green with those red Stonehenge knockoffs everywhere. You’ve been here before, but you never asked about its name. When you turn around, you see that everything behind you is cloudy and darker, and mushrooms are growing from the ground like they’ve always been there.

Roxy catches you looking at them and says, “It’s catching our memories already. It’ll just change into something familiar if we don’t grab onto some memory and force it in line.”

That sounds like work to you, so you shrug. “Familiar sounds good.”

“I know,” Roxy says. “I didn’t just hang out with wet sea assholes, you know. I met a couple other youses in here, and talked to them.”

Huh! People remembering different yous is always a little weird. But Davesprite was really clear about that just being part of the way paradox space is. And now that you’ve met yourself, and had a conversation with a past you that never happened for you, you’re pretty sure you’ve topped regular dreambubble alternate shenanigans.

Roxy pokes you in the arm, and flops down onto a mushroom. She crosses her legs and sits on it like it’s a throne, then leans forward and grins like a cat. “You’ll never guess what they told me about.”

“. . . What?” you ask. In the mouth of like ninety percent of your social circle, that would be a threat, if a sorta dumb one that only led to embarrassing photos being published on social media. But Roxy is nice, and anyways you don’t even think they have wifi in the dreambubbles. It’s been so long since you’ve pestered someone, now that you’re all more or less in the same area.

“These!” Roxy crows, and snaps her fingers. A clump of gushers pops into existence in mid-air, and falls to the ground. Roxy winces. “Shit, sorry, hope you don’t mind a little dust.” She moves to pick them up, but you aren’t listening. They’re in all colors! And they’re even all fused together by their inner juices! Thank you, alternate timeline John! You are truly a hero among men.

“Oh hell yes!” you say. “It’s been ages since I had these!” You whoosh the pile of gushers up from the ground to your hand, blowing the dirt off in the process. Not that you’re keeping track or anything, but windy powers are probably one of the greatest things that ever happened to you.

Roxy grins at the look on your face. “They’re not quiiiite like the real thing,” she says, and shrugs. “I spent hells of a long time tryin to beat up the Batterwitch, I’m not gonna recreate her stuff one hundred percent.” She flips a hand at you, and smiles again. “But you can handle it, right?”

You consider for a moment. “Sounds fair enough!” You float down a little bit, so your head is more level with Roxy’s. It seems unfair to make her keep looking up. “I mean,” you say. “I didn’t eat these for forever because they were all gross and Batterwitch-y. But they’re just candy, you know? Or not candy, really, more of a delicious snack!” Roxy arches her eyebrows at you, and you roll your eyes. “You know what I mean! Even if you think they’re gross.”

“She coulda totally put wack mind control formulas in them,” Roxy says, reaching up to poke at one of the gushers floating in midair. You sweep them way up out of the way. She jumps, trying to catch them, and settles for punching you in the leg instead.

“Aah!” you exclaim, and she smirks.

“That’s what you get for cheating!”

You stare at her. “Just use your god powers to cheat back! C’mon, that’s what makes this fun!”

Roxy glances up at a spot just beyond your head, and you barely have time to react before – BAM! She’s zapped up there, hanging in the air like she’s some kind of weird blue cloud in a hoodie. Or just a regular cloud, maybe.

Personally, you’ve always liked just lifting yourself up with your breeze skills. It feels more natural and floaty than your regular god tier flight, which you’ve always thought made you feel kinda weird, like your body wasn’t all there. Though Jade tells you this is “normal, you’re just being dumb!” and “just like flying on Prospit!” which isn’t exactly helpful. It’s also something you’ve had some fights about, you guess, in the past. Well. Less like fights than just sibling squabbles, where you try to get the other one to call uncle, but with reality-altering powers. Haha, okay, neither of you had any sense at all at thirteen.

Meanwhile, Roxy is crowing her victory to the skies above you. “Fuck yeah, this teleport thing mega tough to pull off!” she calls to you. “Even though I make it look all . . . breezy.” She grins, wiggling her eyebrows, and you groan.

“What’s it like?” you ask her. Back when this started, you used to think everyone else’s powers were super confusing, and not something you could really get a hold of. Actually, you thought your powers were super confusing too! But ever since the meteor trip (but mostly ever since Terezi came up with that plan) you’ve been giving serious thought to how everyone else’s powers work. If you’re going to jump through all these timelines – even if you’re mostly stable now – you never know what you might need to know. That’s something that worries you a bit, sometimes. Forgetting something important, that is. But that’s why you have friends, and more importantly, why you have friends who are inured to weird time shenanigans! You can ask them pretty much whatever you want, whenever you want.

“Eh.” Roxy thinks for a moment. “It’s all kinds of fucked up, T-B-H.” she says. She pronounces each letter like she’s popping a piece of gum. Something on your face must have looked horrified, because you kind of are, and she quickly continues. “Not bad fucked up, just regular demon dream monster thing fucked up. Ya know. Well,” she says, looking pensive, “It’s probs a Derse dreamer sitch, bein’ all connected to the Horror-whatevers. And they live out in the void, so teleporting is like ‘WHAM! Tentacles in your face!’” She makes a grotesque face.

“That’s my bug and windshield impression BTW,” Roxy adds. “Never been in a car though, so it ain’t that good.”

You laugh despite yourself. You’ve always thought the Horrorterrors were gross, after thinking back on Rose when she was all grimdark. But you’ve never even liked seafood, so you guess it was probably inevitable! “I’ve got a car,” you offer. It’s been a while seen you’ve driven, though, and actually – “Uh,” you say. “Actually, I’m not sure if I still have it. I might’ve thrown it off a roof at some point? Davesprite definitely filled the gas type with smuppet skins once, though.” Now that you think about it, that would probably not be a particularly great introduction to cars. You need to set Roxy up with a good car, like you’re marrying off your firstborn daughter and need to find the best dude possible.

“It’s no biggie,” Roxy says, shrugging.

“Yeah,” you say. “Did you know Dave didn’t own a car either? And neither did Jade, but counting her seems like cheating because there weren’t any actual roads on the islands.”

“Come oooon,” Roxy moans, rolling her eyes. “Just eat my gushers, John, you’re bein ridic here.”

“Oh!” you say. “Oh yeah, those!”

“Oh, only those gross fruit tumors you add me turn traitor to make,” Roxy says, teasing grin spreading across her face.

You roll your eyes. “It’s not turning traitor, it’s subverting her recipe for the greater good! The greater good of me having delicious food.” You flick your wrist and make one of the gushers fly way up and land in your mouth.

Reason number one Breath powers are great: you will never lose a food-catching contest again. Take that, elementary school cafeterias!

You bite down, and nearly choke on whatever the hell is inside of them. “What the fuck, Roxy?” you yelp. She starts, and you go on: “You said she could’ve put mind control gunk in them or whatever, but you didn’t mention this gross stuff. It tastes like eating the insole of a shoe! Uh, not that I’ve eaten one before,” you add hastily.

“Whaaat?” Roxy cries. “Dumb fuckin candy, it knows I’m gonna burn the Batterwitch. Gimme one.” She flies over to you and grabs one. Her flight still doesn’t feel right to you, without the stirs of Breeze you can feel when you fly around, or the weird vibrations you sometimes got off of Jade’s teleportation. You hope it wasn’t real radiation, because you will punch cancer in the face if it shows up anywhere but Karkat’s sweater. She takes a bite and immediately spits it out, then turns to grin at you. “Okay, that was major league gross. It’s got all this perfectly generic object gunk shoved up in the jelly outside, like the worlds’ smallest butt plug.”

“Um, okay,” you say.

“It’ll be easy to fix,” Roxy says, shrugging. “Just gotta focus a bit more – then we can eat them together.” She smiles at you, then, and suddenly sharing nostalgic snack food seems like a date, and you’re riding in the limousine to the restaurant after prom, just like in all of Karkat’s movies. And you’ve seen a lot of bit and pieces of those jumping through time. Oh god maybe you should have paid attention to them, maybe they would have given you tips, and Roxy is smiling at you and –

She floats up and kisses you. You hit your heads together a bit, or really a lot, because you didn’t realize how stupidly large your own forehead is until just now. But it’s fun, and you feel like you’re floating. Or more floating than usual, you guess! But you kiss her back, and hope she feels all light inside too.

(Her next attempt at gushers is pumpkin flavored. You complain about Starbucks, and gross girly drinks, but if you still lived in Maple Valley, god, you’d petition for these to be in every box, Batterwitch or not.)


End file.
